Mary Ruth Marks

When Mary Ruth headed off to college, horse in tow, she had already begun a life long love of driving. After earning a degree at the University of Mississippi, she headed north to Wisconsin with the experiences and knowledge of her mentor, Robert Stockett, Sr. She began breeding Arabians with German horses, a cross that certainly worked having had much success with Fours, Tandems and Singles. Her homebreds have been long listed for the USET. Mary Ruth has been Midwest 4-in-hand Champion, Midwest Tandem Champion, has been Champion Pair Horse and Champion Single Horse at combined driving competitions and authored the popular video "Teach Your Horse to Drive" that has been sold in 46 states and 12 countries in the world.Her current stallion, ADESZKO, was an alternate for the world singles championships this year. Mary Ruth maintains an “R” judges card and also enjoys giving seminars and clinics. “I love teaching others how to safely drive their horses, and putting together a tandem is a blast” states Mary Ruth.

Melissa Boyd

Melissa Boyd, owner of Equine Sports located in Fenton, Michigan has been teaching carriage driving for over 25 years.  Melissa has worked as judge, technical delegate, and safety officer for both USEF and ADS events.  She was recently a driving demonstrator at the World Equestrian Games in Kentucky.  Melissa works well with beginner drivers who are seeking confidence in themselves and their horse as well as advanced drivers who wish to improve their dressage scores by fine tuning their driving skills while developing the best use of their horse.  Melissa advocates continuous improvement of dressage skills for all levels of drivers to affect a better balanced horse resulting in increased comfort, performance and safety.  Equine Sports is a full service facility offering riding and driving lessons, boarding, training and rehabilitation care. 

Muffy Seaton

Muffy Seaton from Williston, SC, is a well-known driver, trainer and breeder of driving ponies. She has been an active CDE and Pleasure Driving competitor, judge and clinician for the past 30 years. In addition Muffy has served on ADS & USEF driving committees and was the Mid-Atlantic Regional ADS Representative for three years. She is a Registered USEF and ADS judge in Pleasure, Combined Driving and Driving Dressage. She also is one of very few worldwide to hold the prestigious Light Harness Horse Instructors license given out by the British Driving Society.

Driving her Dartmoor pair of “Fleas”, Muffy has won every major Combined Driving Event in the East and in 1997 was invited to represent the United States at the Royal Windsor Horse Show in England where she placed third overall and was the highest placed American. She has been the USEF National Pony Champion 4 times, first with a four-in-hand and then with her pair. In 2005 she trained and qualified the single pony who won the gold medal at the World Pony Championships in England. She is now training and competing a new large pony, with the Pony World Championship as a goal.

She and her husband, Doug, run a residential driving program from their farm in South Carolina open to any and all drivers and their horses to come and learn more about driving.

As a clinician, Muffy believes a strong bond of confidence has to exist between the driver and the driving horse in order to have a safe and happy turnout. She stresses communication and trust in all her training sessions. She feels that without communication, there can be no trust and therefore no teamwork between driver and horse.

Muffy and Drive On Productions have released a book and a video called “Bending the Driving Horse” that outlines her training methods of producing balanced happy driving horses, as well as the videos “Turnout and Presentation” and “Combined Driving 101”. Her newest video, Navigating 101, helps with questions from would be navigators. Drive On Productions has now just released a new video addressing the basics of harnessing for those new to the sport of driving.

Her website is www.muffyseaton.com where you can keep up with clinic schedules, in house training, and current events.

Stacey Giere - Bio Coming Soon